We had an interesting main set at our club swim on Wednesday*. Limited instruction, other than to swim all reps at 1500m pace. After the warm up and drills, we were told to do 4*100 off 2mins. I was at the back of the lane, and with 5s intervals, the front person was just about heading off when I hit the wall.

After 4 reps, she was already off again, and it transpired we were now straight into 4*100 off 1:50. Same thing happened after those 4 reps...no rest straight into 4*100 off 1:45. Finished off with the same again with 4*100 off 1:40.

Seeing as I'll often train to c1:40 as being my CSS (I knew it was actually around 1:37 but round numbers are easier!), I think I need a retest! I actually felt really good through the session and held 1:35-1:37 for all reps. And I actually felt pretty decent too. I certainly didnt feel like I was fighting the water to make the turnarounds, and was keeping a relatively smooth, powerful stroke (for me!). I also wasn't particularly struggling with the 3-5s recoveries in the final set, demonstrating I wasn't on the limit.

I normally struggle when I don't know when the end point is, but actually found the mental aim of just finishing the next known 4*100 worked really well. Swimming 6:40 for the final 400, including some recoveries, with over 2k already completed, is a good sign of where I am at. I'd like to think my 5:59 400m pb would be beatable. I have another club swim tomorrow morning, so might use my lunchtime swim Monday to get a CSS test in ... lane traffic dependent.

*I say "interesting", as for me getting down to "off 1:40's" is a bit of a challenge. For the guys at the front of the fast lane, they're still getting 25+ seconds rest, so for them it's probably all rather comfortable!

I turned up an hour early and was well into a main threshold set when swim club started. Thought I might be pushing too far and toward injury but finished up 4800m feeling pretty good.

Pretty hungry though

Sounds like a great set. I can't imagine swimming that far. Even leading up to IMUK when I was swimming a lot I only ever did 2500m max in the pool and 3000m max in the lake (apart from one 3.5k swim).

Sounds like a great set. I can't imagine swimming that far. Even leading up to IMUK when I was swimming a lot I only ever did 2500m max in the pool and 3000m max in the lake (apart from one 3.5k swim).

Obviously need to dedicate myself more this year.

Keep your pool sessions the same total distance (mainly intervals) and push your OW swims out to 4500m at peak volume. The swim is by far the easiest discipline to train 'over distance'... so you should take advantage of that, and reap the benefits in T1 and beyond.
_________________25 Years since it all began....

Never had the swim.com app fail on me, but it did sometime today in the second half of my 3200m time trial main set.

After swearing a bit I did another 500m, just to see what pace I was at after at least an 1hr or so in the pool, I was about still going 1:51-1:58 pace. About 36min after 1900m including 300m warm up, so on pace for my previous IM swim.

I can't remotely imagine holding that kind of pace for a session. OK, I did just hold 1:26.5 for 400m, but that was everything I had. Targeting the club swims again the rest of this week, and have a sprint race on Sunday, but will maybe try a CSS based session early next week. I predict I make maybe 4 of the 8*200 before I'm cooked!

I can't remotely imagine holding that kind of pace for a session. OK, I did just hold 1:26.5 for 400m, but that was everything I had. Targeting the club swims again the rest of this week, and have a sprint race on Sunday, but will maybe try a CSS based session early next week. I predict I make maybe 4 of the 8*200 before I'm cooked!

Well done, good test. How much of an improvement is that on your last test?

My most recent test was an 800m TT - 10:20.

I just had a search back through garmin connect history, and the last proper 400/200 test I can find was August 2015. Oops! That test was 6:09 and 3:00. So about a 6.5% reduction in both times in 18m.

I've tended to do longer steady state TT tests over the past 12 months or so. Those have had small improvement over time. More recently, it's only in the last couple of weeks I've really started focusing on my swimming again since London. I'm swimming at least 3 times a week again now.

I can't remotely imagine holding that kind of pace for a session. OK, I did just hold 1:26.5 for 400m, but that was everything I had. Targeting the club swims again the rest of this week, and have a sprint race on Sunday, but will maybe try a CSS based session early next week. I predict I make maybe 4 of the 8*200 before I'm cooked!

I have found that sometimes the 200m time can skew the CSS pace. If you bury yourself on the 400 and suffer on the 200 then that can give you a faster CSS pace. Have a go on the calculator. Taking a couple of seconds off your 200m time can often give you a slower CSS pace.

My last test my CSS pace came out at 1:30. I can't hold that for a whole set. I add 0.5 sec on and if it feels easy knock a couple of tenths off.

I can usually tell on a normal CSS session (16*100, 8*200, 4*400) whether or not the test was representative or not. And I can do one of those sessions, with some wu/drills, in a lunchtime. That red mist set would take in excess of 90mins I guess, when you factor in wu, rests, etc

I can usually tell on a normal CSS session (16*100, 8*200, 4*400) whether or not the test was representative or not. And I can do one of those sessions, with some wu/drills, in a lunchtime. That red mist set would take in excess of 90mins I guess, when you factor in wu, rests, etc

You don't need a WU with red mist. You start off at CSS+6 sec which is pretty relaxed. Takes me about 1:15.

Yeah I don't think you need to do that to validate it. Once you have been training for a while you can tell when its too hard/easy. A couple of sessions in a row where I'm off the pace and I know its time to change.

I also know that when the Red Mist set is moving up my list of favorite sets its getting too easy

I haven't done a CSS test in ages, not sure it really helped me before. I'm swimming off perceived exertion at the moment.

I base my swims around moderate/hard being my half iron pace 1:43.

I think my best 25m is 19s and my best 3.8km is 69mins45. So thats what, 1:16 graphing up to 1:57/100m.

EDIT

Did a test before swim club today - 7:00 for 400 and 3:20 for 200, which calculates as 1:50/100.

I find CSS very important. Unlike bike and run, swimming isn't particularly damaging, so you can work at your stress point more regularly. The issue with perceived effort in the water is that it will almost certainly mean you are slowing down as your swim muscles tire. Everything I do in the pool, other than drills, is pace driven.

The whole goal of CSS sessions is to keep the pace consistent, which means a steady ramp in perceived effort throughout. It starts off easy, but by the end it feels like it's all out.

On your test, I don't quite see how you can hold 1:43/100 for 1900m if you can only go at 1:40 for 200m flat out. You have a serious lack of top end speed if that's the case, and I would suggest working on that for a session per week which would then mean the more threshold speeds feel much more comfortable. I definitely found sprint sessions improved my "feel" for the water quite significantly. When you're trying to sprint for 25-50 metres, you can really feel where you are slipping the water, or causing extra drag.

EDIT - more importantly, how can you hold 1:43/100 for a HIM if you can't even do 400m at that pace? Something isn't quite right.